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Distinctives

Wednesday 20 November 2024

Growing up, there were a lot of Bibles in our house. All were corrupt translations in one way or another, my father (on the teaching and authority of our little sect) assured me, and it was necessary to read a given passage in a number of different passages to understand it fully.

One of the Bibles we had was the Scofield Reference Bible. Our sect’s leader, Herbert Armstrong, extolled it for its important commentary. It was, in essence, the King James Version with James Scofield’s commentary and explanation.

The Scofield was a Bible out of step with what corrupt Protestants and whore-of-Babylon Catholics used. We were the only real Christians on the entire planet, see, and everyone else was corrupt in one way or another. The Protestants liked the King James Version, that’s true, and that was a redeeming point in our eyes, but too many used the Revised Standard Version, or even worse, the liberal New International Version. Like other Christians, we referred to these versions by their initials: the KJV was superior, and the RSV was acceptable, but the NIV was an abomination. Above them all, though, was the Scofield Reference Edition, which I doubted any of my Protestant friends at school had ever heard of.

It turns out, several probably had. It was the favored edition of John Nelson Darby, a nineteenth-century Evangelical who came up with the idea of the rapture, the idea that Jesus would whisk his believers away just before all hell breaks loose on Earth at the end of time. These eschatological ideas come from various places in the Bible. Passages from the Old Testament prophets are mixed with passages from the New Testament epistles of Paul and then folded into the Book of Revelation to produce a horrifying image of the end of the world with something like three-fourths of humans dying in the misery. Scofield’s ideas shaped Darby’s ideas, and the idea of the rapture is a key component of Evangelical Protestants to this day. Most of the pastors serving as “spiritual advisors” to Trump during his first term held to this idea, which is somewhat terrifying: people advising the president were expecting the literal destruction of most of humanity, thinking that they might be playing a part in the prophetic nonsense that leads up to all of that.

Our sect had its own end-of-the-world scenario, but I was always taught that our vision of the future was original and, most significantly, correct. So I grew up not knowing about the idea of the rapture and how Evangelicals interpreted the Bible to create a picture of the end of the word. I certainly didn’t realize how damn similar it was to ours. They even used terms that I thought were exclusive to our correct understanding of the Bible, terms like “The Great White Throne Judgement.”

That’s one thing I’ve learned as I study more about other sects and denominations of Christianity. Far from being unique, our beliefs were an amalgamation of just about every sect out there. Bits and pieces from the Mormons? Check. A little something from the Jehovah’s Witnesses? It’s right there. A touch of good old fashioned Evangelicalism? Got it. Our combination of these things was unique, to be sure, but there was nothing new in anything we believed. Contrary to the assurances of our ministers and leaders, we were not special or unique.

I got to thinking about all of this tonight because of a book by Bart Ehrman I’m reading. Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End takes a scholarly look at the Book of Revelation and traces the history of some of the ideas modern Christians root in that book — like the rapture. Suddenly I was reading about the Scofield Reference Bible, something I hadn’t thought about in decades.

Papa’s was in a leather cover with a zipper, and he had covered countless pages with endless annotations. When Papa moved in with us, we got rid of most of his Bibles (his choice — “How many do I really need?”), but I found myself wondering if we still had his Scofield. I walked into his old room, looked at the top row of his bookshelf where I knew the Bibles lived.

And there was a Scofield.

“I don’t think that’s his, though,” I thought, remembering the leather cover. I opened it and saw it was covered in annotations. “But that’s not Papa’s writing,” I realized. Sure enough, on the inside cover: Ruby Williams, Nana’s mother. She wasn’t a member of our sect. In fact, I think she rather disliked it. But she was an Evangelical and so shared a preference for the Scofied.

The annotations themselves are fascinating. On one page, there are all the signs of the interpretative practices we borrowed from Evangelicalism.

“The Bible is a jigsaw puzzle!” Herbert Armstrong, our sect’s founder and leader, taught countless times. One had to piece together bits from here and bits from there to see the true picture. In serious (i.e., scholarly) study of the Bible, there’s a term for this: proof-texting. The idea is simple: if you take bits randomly from the Bible (i.e., get your proof from throughout the text), you can prove anything.

On the above page of text from the Old Testament prophetic Book of Zechariah, we see my grandmother connected it to the Book of Revelation (chapters 17 and 18) as well as Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (chapter 1 verse 4). The vast majority of the text is underlined to indicate its importance.

And along the foot of the page, the reason for everyone’s love (or hatred) of this particular edition: James Scofield’s commentary. He patiently explains that “Symbolically, a ‘measure’ (or ‘cup’)” is something that’s full and “God must judge it.” These are not usual study notes for a Bible. It’s not explaining some ambiguities of the original Hebrew. It’s not discussing the translation difficulties of a given term. It’s telling readers what this particular passage symbolizes. It is interpreting the Bible, putting ideas in readers’ heads that really don’t come from the Biblical text but rather from Scofield’s vision of the whole sweep of Biblical history.

Along the top, we also see it connected to contemporary social commentary: “Big business worships ‘almighty dollar.'” On that single annotated page is the story of the Evangelical approach to the Bible, and while it would have pained me to admit it as a child (who doesn’t want to be special? called out? unique?), it is the story of our interpretative technique as well.

Pack’s Confusing Response

Friday 11 October 2024

Everyone’s favorite cult leader, David C. Pack, is at it again. In part 541 (I wish I was being hyperbolic, but alas, he’s been preaching the same sermon series for years now, setting dates for the return of his convoluted version of Jesus, resetting those dates, and resetting them still again, literally hundreds of times) of “The Greatest Untold Story,” he made some comments about the averted longshoremen strike. He, of course, made it seem like such a strike would result in the end of the United States itself. But God has had mercy on us:

Now God seems to have allowed it to abate, maybe for our sake or because of his work, but that’s what would come come winter and certainly in the spring, if time went on and the wrong person was elected, which may or may not happen.

What is most striking about this is the double-think involved in it. Pack and his predecessors before him (namely, Herbert Armstrong) always asserted that the fall of the United States was a certainty, that it was, in fact, the central element of God’s end-time plan. It would be something someone who really believes this silliness would positively anticipate, with almost giddy excitement. He wouldn’t go around saying this fall will almost certainly happen “if time went on and the wrong person was elected.” Since God is orchestrating the whole thing, it’s utterly impossible for “the wrong person” be be elected.

It makes me think, yet again, that these guys know what they’re saying is utter bullshit but they have fallen in love with the power and prestige (prestige in the eyes of a few hundred people at most, but god-like prestige all the same) they have.

August Saturday

Saturday 31 August 2024

I’ve written often enough, I suppose, about how my Saturday rhythm has changed over the last forty years or so. Saturday once meant church, seclusion, no work, no socializing with non-church folks, no sports, no school-related activities. Nothing that could pollute our minds or get our focus away from our sect’s teachings.

Saturday afternoon at 2:30 we met at the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) union hall. We usually arrived at least an hour earlier, and stayed at least an hour past the 4:30 end time. Every Saturday afternoon, a two-hour meeting during which men of dubious theological education pontificated about the conspiracy theories that comprised the bulk of the organization’s theology. The only saving grace was the playing (and later, as a teenager, socializing) that took place before and after the meeting.

Shrubs before

These days, my Saturdays are so much more fluid. Sometimes, there’s a clear outline to the day, with chores in the yard occupying much of my time. Once school starts, I send a fair amount of the morning grading students’ work. Today, for example, I went through 43 kids’ single-paragraph analysis of “The Cask of Amontillado.” They wrote things like this:

The narrator’s story can be trusted because Montressor is confessing his actions to the priest on his deathbed. For example, Montressor talks to the preist because he knows the “nature of [his] soul.” and would not believe that he “gave utterance to a threat”. This proves that the priest knows Montressor very well, probably because the same priest would come to his house often. The priest also would not suppose Montressor killed someone. He would most likely want to admit his wrong doings before he died. Another example is, In “half of a century” no one has disturbed the catacombs or found Fourtunado’s body. It shows that no one has found out what happened to Fortunato 50 years later. This also explains the reasoning why Montressor would tell his priest, because he would be very old by this time; old enough to be on his deathbed. To sum it up, because Montressor is confessing to the priest that he killed Fortunado, this narrative can be reliable.

I worked through the papers in between trimming shrubs, cleaning my bike chain, and cleaning out the basement.

The shrubs — didn’t L just trim those? Her chores on Saturday usually include getting crickets for her frog, shopping (she usually gets the week’s groceries on Fridays, but there’s always something more we need), and cleaning her room.

Shrubs after

The bike chain — didn’t I just clean it? Bike maintenance is something I’ve never really enjoyed. It’s so tedious cleaning a chain, replacing cables, adjusting brakes, replacing tires. But the worst of it all is definitely chain cleaning. No matter how carefully I clean it, there’s always a bit of grime left behind. But nothing makes a bike look better than a spotless chain.

Today, I used a new degreaser, and I was fairly pleased with the results. Ultimately, what I’d like is an ultrasonic cleaner that I could just drop the chain into for a few minutes and then let dry. But in the meantime, I’ll use a degreasing solution and toothbrush.

Cleaning out the basement — there’s been a crate of old books that K will eventually take to Goodwill, and among the books are several of my college lit anthologies. I’ve kept them for so long because — well, I really don’t know why. I haven’t cracked one open in so long. I had them at school for a long time, but I’ve run out of shelf space and brought them hope.

That is a story in and of itself. Last year, the state of South Carolina provided each English teacher with $3,500 worth of independent reading books so we could have a classroom library of contemporary, high-interest books. But this year, things changed:

Effective August 1st, 2024, SC Regulation 43-170 requires teachers to produce a complete list of the Instructional Materials (including classroom library books) that are used in or available to a student in any given class, course, or program that is offered, supported, or sponsored by a school, or that are otherwise made available by any District employee to a student on school premises. That list shall be provided upon reasonable request by any parent/guardian of a student in the District.

Greenville County Schools Press Release

In short, we’re not to have any books that even hint at sex. It’s another last-gasp effort of the far right to maintain its stranglehold on young people’s minds, I say to myself. For me, it’s simply a headache, which is why I’ve closed my library: I haven’t made the list yet, and I have no idea when I’ll be able to. In the meantime, I posted a sign explaining the situation, and I look forward to Meet the Teacher night when all parents can see the signs because I’m going to make my presentation standing right beside one.

So I guess in a way, my Saturdays have come full circle.

Against the Gates of Hell: A Short Review

Thursday 20 June 2024

The book purports to tell the story of a church’s fight for religious liberty. Specifically, it’s supposed to be an insider’s account of the State of California’s actions against the Worldwide Church of God (WCG), legal actions that began 3 January 1979 and concluded some months afterward. The state placed the church into receivership to investigate allegations of fiscal impropriety. That, of course, fed right into the church’s prophecy that it would be persecuted in the end times, and after reading the book and doing some research, I’m not convinced the state acted wisely at all.

Still, the book is supposed to be about that legal battle, and it does cover some of that. There are a couple of chapters that are virtually hour-by-hour accounts of what happened in the first days, but quickly enough, Rader veers off and spends a great deal of the book covering other things:

  1. The biography of WCG founder Herbert Armstrong
  2. An autobiographical sketch of the author
  3. An account of all the traveling Armstrong and Rader did in the name of the church
  4. The story of the building of Ambassador Auditorium and the performers who performed there

My rough estimation is that only a third of the book (at best) is about the actual legal action. That’s too bad, because it’s in the other portions of the book that Rader loses all credibility, presenting accounts that just read like fabrications.

He writes of visiting Jordan and spending time “with Prince Mohammed, the younger brother of King Hussein.” The prince was eager to play chess with someone, and Rader’s wife Niki volunteered to play him. The prince won the first game, and as they began the second game, he admitted that it was somewhat unfair. “You see, I am the president of the Jordanian Chess Federation,” he explained.

My wife said nothing. She merely pursed her lips and then proceeded to demolish Mohammed, not only capturing his queen but also giving it back to him. The prince looked astounded and the board was set up a third time. Niki destroyed him again.

Rader explained to the astonished prince, that what his “‘wife failed to tell you was that she plays all the time’ I paused just a split second — ‘with Bobby Fischer.’ Fischer, of course, is the former world chess champion with whom Niki does play, though he beats her consistently.” Fischer was, at that time, associated with the WCG, and it’s possible that she did play some chess with him, but the anecdote feels contrived.

When writing about the initial concerts in Ambassador Auditorium, which the arts community in Los Angeles supposedly jealously resisted, he writes,

Resistance came from yet another area. When the 1975 series was announced, a rabbi, noted for his radical stance on issues, charged that the Church and the foundation were launching a grave assault on Judaism! In radio broadcasts and newspaper interviews, he urged a Jewish boycott of the series. His reasoning, as I gather it, was as follows: Jewish parents attending the concerts with their children would see a lovely campus, have their cars parked by polite, well-groomed Ambassador College students, sit in a splendid hall and view all around them other well-spoken, well-dressed students. On the way home, the parents would turn to each other and ask: “Why can’t our kids be more like that? Maybe we ought to send them to Ambassador College.” Then, of course, they would be converted. The situation may sound funny but it was serious.

Again, it seems silly. Even if this unnamed rabbi said that in mock seriousness, he was surely joking. Anyone who knows the bizarre and silly teachings of the WCG would realize that Jewish children would be at no risk of converting to a little group that suggests that proof that Britain is one of the Lost Ten Tribes is the “fact” that “Saxon” comes from a shortened version of “Isaac’s sons.” Just drop the initial letter and we have “Sacc’s sons”! (Herbert Armstrong floated this theory in his largely-plagiarized “The United States and Britain in Prohephy” book.)

A final example: Armstrong and Rader were trying to get Herbert von Karajan to conduct the inagural concert. In their conversation, they had the following exchange:

Thinking back, I can see how wildly ludicrous it all must have seemed. Here we were in Germany, talking about bringing over a great conductor and a great orchestra to play in an auditorium that wasn’t there, and blandly asking him to set a date. Yet so total was Mr.

Armstrong’s confidence, so potent his persuasiveness, and so appealing the picture we painted of the great cultural center, that von Karajan became convinced. He studied his calendar, trying to shift dates. But when he was available, the orchestra was not, and when the orchestra had time, he did not. Regretfully, he informed us that it would be impossible for him to come.

“Maestro,” I asked, “in your opinion, who is second to you in the world as a maestro?”

“There is no question,” he replied at once. “Second to me is Giulini.”

“Oh,” I said, glancing at Mr. Armstrong. “Is that right?” I had never heard of Giulini and neither, I was certain, had Mr. Armstrong.

“Absolutely,” Von Karajan was saying. “He is a great artist.”

This seems a caricature of what a “great conductor” would say. Second to me?! Perhaps von Karajan was so arrogant, but it just doesn’t seem realistic at all.

Finally, there was a conversation with Arthur Rubinstein:

Looking up, he asked Mr. Armstrong sternly: “Sir, are you a professional?” Mr. Armstrong, beaming said: “No, I’m not, but you are and you will agree after you have had a chance to play them.” He explained they were Steinways, carefully selected by him and purchased in Hamburg.

Now Rubinstein became distinctly annoyed. “Sir,” he said, “I don’t like that kind of talk from nonprofessionals.” Mr. Armstrong said he understood, but once again repeated his assertion.

With the pianist continuing to bristle, I felt it wise to change the subject. “Would you like some champagne?” I asked them. Mr. Rubinstein brusquely declined but Mr. Armstrong accepted. When the waiter began pouring Dom Perignon, Rubinstein noticed the bottle and said, “I’ll have some, thank you.” To me he said: “That is all I drink; I was afraid you might order something else.” That broke the ice somewhat and for the rest of the evening the conversation became less strained.

Mr. Rubinstein agreed to perform. A couple of days before his concert, I met him in front of the auditorium and escorted him inside. While he was enormously impressed with the grounds, the building and the foyer, the moment he stepped through the doors into the theatre – catastrophe! “This is terrible!” he exclaimed. Startled, I asked what he meant. “The carpeting, the upholstery. It’s too plush. The sound will be absorbed. It will never do! Oh, I should never have come… How could you have good music with this!”

“Maestro,” I reassured him, “I know what you think, but please believe me. The acoustics are absolutely perfect. Please don’t worry about it.” I followed him down the aisle toward the stage, trying to calm him but his agitation grew as he progressed. I could see he didn’t believe a word.

“Let me see the pianos,” he grumbled and stormed up to the stage.

He ran his Fingers over the keys and the miracle happened.

He played chords on one piano, and then literally ran to the other. For many minutes he scurried between them, playing on each, his face mirroring wonderment and pleasure. He was like a child in a candy store, going from one delight to the other and unable to make up his mind which to choose. Finally he said to me: “It’s never happened in my whole life. Never have I heard two finer pianos!”

Again, it just reads like invented braggadocio

That’s the tone of the whole book: it’s more Rader bragging about himself than anything else.

Pool Thoughts

Tuesday 11 June 2024

Today was a day focused in some ways on the Boy. He had his three best friends over for the day (the twins plus, you might say), and we decided to go to the pool for the afternoon. This was the pool in which we had a membership some years ago, the first (and only) year the Boy was on the swim team, so I was familiar with it had had all the appropriate expectations: lots of kids, lots of yelling, lots of chaos.

I had no desire to bob about in a crowded pool, and swimming laps would have been out of the question, so I took something to read and relaxed by the pool in a covered area. Taking a break from reading, I glanced up at a newly-installed support pole supporting the corner of the structure. I noticed there were no bolts at all securing the support to the concrete pool deck. “Surely there’s some kind of support at the top,” I thought. Nope. An entire corner of a structure bearing down on a completely unsecured support: seems safe enough.

I checked the other four supports: the one in the other corner of the open area had two bolts at the two and two at the bottom. Two at each end is certainly better than none, but not quite sufficient considering each end of the pole required four bolts. Of the other two supports, one had a single bolt in the top but none at the bottom (though there was a zip-tie through one of the lower bolt holes) and the other had no bolts whatsoever. So of the thirty-two bolts required for the four poles, there were in fact five bolts in place. Basically, whoever replaced the likely thoroughly rusted supports with these new, shiny poles is relying strictly on gravity to keep the structure safe.

Upon somewhat closer inspection, I realized even the older supports were lacking bolts.

This clear code violation is open view, impossible not to notice. How has it stayed this way so long? Is there a plan to remedy this? Has someone spoken to the local building inspector about it? Has anyone else even noticed?

For a brief moment, a scenario runs through my head: I decide to contact the local building inspector and report the condition. To make things clear, I decide to include photographs of the supports. As I snap pictures with my phone, someone notices what I’m doing and takes umbrage. “They might close down the pool!” the individual complains. A confrontation ensues.

In the conservative South, there seems to be a general distrust of anything that even hints of governmental control, and it’s often tied back to religion in some way or another. Environmental regulations are classified as government overreach and a violation of the divine mandate for humans to use the earth as they themselves see fit a la Genesis. Rumors of coming vaccination requirements during the pandemic had people speaking of apocalyptic visions and the antichrist. And the closing of churches during the pandemic? That was evil itself: Satan trying to bring the gates of hell against our freedom to worship our Lord and Savior. “We’re a freedom-loving people!” This all soon devolves into talk of the supposed Deep State and affirmations of the necessity to re-elect Trump to clean the swamp and defeat the fascists of the Deep State, not to mention fascist building building inspectors.

I am, of course, exaggerating, but just barely.

So to avoid such confrontations, I waited until just before we left to take the pictures that I will send to the neighborhood’s residential board members…

The reason I went down that rabbit hole, in part, has to do with my most recent reading, something I downloaded from an obscure website that specializes in materials from the sect I grew up in. The blurb on Good Reads:

On January 3, 1979, without warning, the attorney general’s office of the state of California struck a hard blow at the Worldwide Church of God. Responding to vague complaints from a few dissident former Church members, the attorney general, in the wake of the People’s Temple tragedy, rushed to court asking that the courts throw the Worldwide Church of God into receivership. It was almost like a military maneuver; the attorney general’s deputies charged onto the campus of Ambassador College in Pasadena, the Church’s headquarters, ordering employees out of the building, demanding church records and actually firing Church officials.

Within hours and then days, the campus swarmed with Church members who poured into Pasadena to fight back. They picketed, they surrounded the buildings, and they swore never to yield to an anti-constitutional assault; at the same time, their leadership was petitioning the courts for relief.

The Church, led for over one half-century by Herbert W. Armstrong, its Pastor General, has been a leader in spiritual affairs in the United States and throughout the world. From his home in Tucson, the 87-year-old Armstrong urged his followers to fight back. Eventually, the membership prevailed. The receiver and his assistants, costing thousands of dollars a day which the Church had been forced to pay, were removed by the courts.

The fight continued into the highest courts of the land. It is the traditional story of stave versus church and of the indignation that erupts whenever the state attempts to deny the rights of a legally constituted church.

This book is the dramatic story of that battle and with it, the story of the Pasadena-based Worldwide Church of God and of its patriarch, Herbert W. Armstrong. It is also the constitutional-issue account of a particular small, but determined, group fighting the powerful state which applies to all who care deeply about our civil liberties. For, had the state of California won its battle and destroyed the Worldwide Church of God, it would be open season for any state to do the same to any other church anywhere in the United States.

I was six when all that happened, and I remember Papa reading Rader’s book to the family on Friday nights. At the time, I viewed the church as a victim; as I grew older and more critical of the church, I took a different view, thinking perhaps the State’s move, while too much, was justified. After all, there was a lot of spiritual abuse going on, and the leaders of the church used that abuse to enrich themselves.

Reading Rader’s book, though, I see the whole thing was a mistake. Not because I don’t think the scrutiny was unjustified — it certainly was. But it galvanized a lot of people and helped reenforce the notion that churches are untouchable because of their constitutional protections.

As an aside, Rader appeared on Sixty Minutes opposite Mike Wallace during all this, and he got quite heated when Wallace played a taped conversation between an informant and Herbert Armstrong:

Startling Admission

Tuesday 6 February 2024

When I listened to Pack’s rant about the individual who left the RCG because he was tired of “faking it,” my initial thoughts were regarding what the individual meant by “faking.” It was only later that I considered the simple fact that mentioning it at all shows a startling lack of critical thinking, a Pack-ian level of egocentrism, or some combination of the two. It was a great and foolish risk Pack took because that comment undoubtedly resonated with members sitting in the headquarters building and reverberated throughout the small congregations worldwide.

Pack probably can’t imagine the number of people in his church who heard that comment and felt it as an indictment of themselves. He suggested it was a question of lying; the individual who quit and everyone remaining who nonetheless relate to the statement all understand it as a question of self-preservation. Pack intended it as an insult to the individual of little faith who was lying by his very presence among true believers; his audience heard it as a tacit admission that the cognitive dissonance required to remain in the RCG is simply overwhelming for many. Pack meant to insult the former member; instead, he only drew attention to his own failures and the cognitive/emotional stress they create.

This highlights just how far Pack has retreated into his own ego. He can’t even realize when the decisions of others are a clear condemnation of his own actions. Sequestered in his compound, his every need handled by others, he can’t even imagine the mental anguish his followers are suffering. Everything he says and does filters through the lens of his own ego, and the refraction of that lens is so complete that Pack literally cannot differentiate his own ego from the world around him.

I know we all hate Hitler comparisons, but I can’t help but draw parallels between Hitler’s decision-making process at the end of the war and Pack’s at what appears to be the end of the RCG. As the Soviets encircled Berlin and defeat became inevitable and obvious, Hitler moved battalions that essentially no longer existed and ordered attacks from army groups that had been decimated. He remained convinced of his certain victory, and he discussed the stunning blow his imaginary, newly-rebuilt Luftwaffe was about to deliver despite the fact that the Allies had complete domination of the skies of Europe. Surrounded by sycophants who were terrified of crossing him, Hitler lived in an echo chamber that only confirmed and compounded his delusions.

Even more telling, when the battle had begun turning months earlier, there might have been a chance for Germany to fight to a stalemate in the east and gain some time to rebuild its forces. Had Hitler ordered the cessation of transports to concentration camps and used those trains to shuttle soldiers to the eastern front, he could have at least slowed his defeat and perhaps prevented it completely. Instead, he did the opposite: he increased the transports to the camps and left his soldiers on the Soviet front with inadequate manpower and supplies. He couldn’t see past his own ego and his sick obsession with being an ultimate “hero” by rendering Europe judenfrei regardless of the war’s outcome. His inward-looking decisions thankfully cost him the war, because simply based on the numbers in 1939, Germany should have conquered Europe.

Similarly, we seem to see this playing out in Europe yet again. Putin has isolated himself, believes his own propaganda, and is convinced of his military genius and his force’s ultimate strength. Since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, Putin has lived in almost complete isolation, and his view of the outside world reflects that. He attacked Ukraine on an imagined pretense; he was confident of a quick victory because his army certainly had to be at least as strong as his ego; his forces suffer loss after loss because he either can’t or won’t concede that his tactics are not working. His ego inflates yet again and more people suffer as a result.

In just the same way, Pack’s ego and his certainty in his prophetic acumen have swelled to proportions that conceal everything else. He, too, has surrounded himself with sycophants and isolated himself not only from the real world but from the lay members that constitute the intellectual isolation that is the RCG. The army that is encircling the compound at Wadsworth is more powerful than the Soviet army, more persistent than the Ukrainian forces: it’s reality, the most merciless conqueror in history.

Taylor

Monday 11 December 2023

This is making the rounds in social media circles connected to this ass-hat’s manipulative bullshit. I think he just makes this crap up…

A Long Letter

Tuesday 21 March 2023

@ 11:51 And here’s where the email gets to be tough to hear. And I hope it deeply sobers every person in the room. “I had four members in a PM tell me just last week how confused they are about prophecy. I directly asked brethren if they were keeping up and understanding what is being taught in the Series. Their frank responses are sometimes sobering. Many brethren are excited about the Series. But I would not be surprised if at least 10 to 20 percent of brethren in my area are confused to the point where they do not even listen to the Series anymore.They just blow it off.” Astounding. And then he talks about a recent trip to a place that he visited, and that confirmed it.

@ 13:26 I very much appreciate this letter. “The reasons they are confused may be many, but I think there are three common issues. Number One: They don’t have literature and reference points they access to review, which outline the basic elements of prophecy. Think of all the charts and booklets we had to explain the Big T.” You know, the Millennium and the Seven Seals we thought preceded it. “And when I was a new member, I thought it was rather complex. Many changes in our understanding is Number Two. This caused many to stop taking notes to prevent the current understanding to get ingrained into their thinking because it will change again.”So they just stop taking notes.

@ 14:14 “Some have even said that it helped them.” Not taking notes anymore. Depends on how you mean that. They could listen better, or they could just tune it out better. I don’t know, maybe both. “The effect is that when an easy part or basic truth is explained, unrelated to prophecy, they don’t take notes, causing the understanding to slip easier. New brethren have zero background and have to,” so this is Number Three. “You have to sorta just figure out how to learn on the fly unless someone takes several hours to bring them up to speed. And in this context, I think sometimes the sermons come so thick and fast that it sometimes just goes over the head of not only new brethren, but also some existing members.”

@ 15:21 “Now, I referred all brethren to the ‘How God’s Kingdom Will Come—Not What You Think!’ World to Come video to help them solidify the different comings of Christ. I have and will refer them to your recent sermon if they’ve not studied it yet. If you know of other material we can refer them to, please let me know. I’ve mentioned this to the Headquarters Ministry in the past, but I find brethren who struggle with the Series difficult to pastor. Several refuse to talk about the Series and will even walk away from a conversation or fellowship containing it.” Astonishing. But there are such people.

@ 16:25 “I started to mention the issues in pastorate reports from more than two years ago, and sometimes I feel like it’s getting worse. Sometimes not.”

@ 16:35 “We all have found some elements of the Series hard to follow, too. But I never want to give brethren the impression that I am in any way undermining the Series or our father in the gospel. Yet at the same time, I fully appreciate the obligation I have towards the sheep God has put in my care. I just try my best to communicate what I see on the ground back to Headquarters. It’s been a challenging task to keep many of the sheep glued to it and excited. It remains awkward to balance. If Friday comes and goes,” Well, it did, fortunately. And it went. It came and went, and I get to give this sermon. “I look forward to exploring (rather urgently) ways to help those who are not actively following the Series anymore. Any ideas will be welcomed. Recently, I mentioned to the Headquarters Ministry how I may want to give a sermon on the Series one day. Maybe two parts just to help their understanding of basic elements. The three iterations, the Seventh and Eighth Head, timing of resurrections, et cetera. You already covered several parts of it. Thanks again.” And how I love reading the last part of that. That’s a proactive pastor.

The Liberation of the Worldwide Church of God: A Review

Wednesday 1 February 2023

Many observers who have been watching the changes within the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) in the last fifteen years have probably wondered about the dynamics within the church’s administration that might have lead to such a change. This is especially true since the truly major doctrinal changes, culminating with the acceptance of the Trinity and rejection of Sabbatarian doctrine in the mid–1990’s. An insider’s story would go a long way in explaining how the changes came about and be of interest and use to members and nonmembers alike.

When Joseph Tkach Jr.’s Transformed By Truth was released, it became immediately clear that this was not the “insider’s story” many people would have liked. Panned by most as shallow propaganda, Transformed fell out of print and has yet to be reprinted.

Michael Feazell’s The Liberation of the Worldwide Church of God generated controversy even before it was released. Many perceived the initial cover art as a condemnation of Herbert Armstrong, indicating that he was suffering eternal damnation for his heresy. Perhaps some Evangelicals might have hoped this was indicative of a coming out-right denunciation of Armstrong. Such was not the case, however. And while the book does offer some much-needed information about the changes within the Worldwide Church of God, it falls short of hard, critical analysis.

Governmental Structure, Christian Duty, and the Pace of Change

There is a certain lack of organization in the book, which initially was a cause of irritation. However, the ironic thing is that without this poor organization, an important facet of Liberation might have slipped by unnoticed.

On several occasions (see pages 45, 114, 119), Feazell makes the point that without the Armstrongian, authoritarian governmental model, the sweeping changes that occurred would never have been possible. I thought about this for a while and realized it was probably true, but it still left me uneasy. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that all the pieces of the puzzle (to use an apt Armstrong analogy, which bordered on cliché) fell into place.

One piece of the puzzle was Feazell’s claim that the Worldwide Church of God’s greatest sin was its exclusivist stance towards other Christians.

The sin of the Worldwide Church of God lay not only with its doctrinal error, but even more seriously with its arrogant, self-righteous, in-your-face declaration that it had the corner on the doctrinal market (169)

It did not follow Jesus’ commands to “have love, one for another.” “There are worse things than poor theology” (166), and this, Feazell reasons, is one of them.

Another piece was Feazell’s refusal to condemn Armstrong as a heretic.1 Feazell writes that God’s grace is sufficient enough to cover even bad theology. “How wrong did Herbert Armstrong have to be to be considered unworthy of God’s forgiving grace?” asks Feazell (101). He continues, “Don’t we all, doctrinally ‘pure’ and doctrinally odd alike, stand together at the foot of the cross, together in utter hopelessness and infinite need of God’s amazing grace?” (102). Feazell’s argument is that condemning Armstrong is drawing

boundaries around the potential of the grace of God to reach even into the area of doctrinal error. Yes, Herbert Armstrong taught error. But does not the grace of God extend even to doctrinal error? I have to believe it does (103).

In other words, Feazell is proposing that despite leading thousands astray, Armstrong is still in the “eternal embrace of the Lord” (149). Indeed, Feazell seems to indicate that condemning Armstrong constitutes another form of heresy: “Heresy comes in many forms, and surely one form is to place humanly devised limitations on the power and grace of God” (103). This is because “the blood of Jesus Christ is powerful enough even to wash his children clean from doctrinal error” (169).

The final piece appears when considering what Feazell writes about the unrelenting velocity of the changes in the WCG. He admits that things could have been slower in certain areas (namely, worship style), but regarding Armstrong’s heresies, “our backs were to the wall,” he writes. “When it comes to false doctrine, a church doesn’t have the luxury of pacing the change” (120). 2

When it came to doctrinal changes, however, we found ourselves having to weight faithfulness to God and commitment to truth against sound principles of managing change. On the one hand, change was coming too fast to be assimilated. On the other hand, how could we just sit on the truth? How could we deliberately allow our church to continue to believe and teach error and heresy? The responsibility to proceed with doctrinal changes once we became convicted of them was greater than the responsibility to go slowly (110).

Curiously, after spending several pages justifying Armstrong on the basis that God’s grace can overcome bad theology, and several more pages explaining that the WCG’s main problem was not its bad theology but its judgmental attitude, theology suddenly seems awfully important. Important enough to put their “backs to the wall” as if they’re standing in front of some denominational firing squad.

What Feazell is saying reduces down to this: Christ’s main command to his church was to love each other. Because of its judgmental attitude and exclusivist theology, the WCG did not fulfill this primary command, and as such, the WCG’s bad theology was actually periphery — not it’s main sin. Indeed, this command to love other Christians is one reason why we cannot condemn Mr. Armstrong. Additionally, such condemnation would be putting a limit on God’s grace, which surly covers bad theology. Still, we had to make all the changes with blinding rapidity and in complete confidentiality because to do otherwise would be another “affront to the gospel” (132).

All these things just doesn’t add up. If there are worse things than bad theology, why the desperate mid-90’s race to change this theology? If not having love one for fellow human beings is worse than bad theology, why rip out from under thousands their primary grounding?

All of this came to my attention when I began noticing that, due to the poor organization,3 Feazell pointed out several times that the authoritarian government structure that helped give the WCG its sectarian status was what enabled these drastic theological changes to be effected. However true that might be, it doesn’t necessarily follow that having such power to make these changes gives one the right to make them, especially in the clandestine fashion that they did. While he doesn’t use the same vocabulary, Feazell argues that it was their “Christian responsibility” to make these changes, much as the WCG argued that it was its responsibility to keep Mystery of the Ages out of circulation by suing the Philadelphia Church of God. Such a claim would simply be a hollow contradiction of what he says in Liberation is the responsibility of a Christian: to love others. Yet it is not surprising that these changes were effected as they were given Feazell’s view that the WCG constituted a “rather immature group” (123).

The Identity Issue and the Question of Audience

The question of identity is another recurring theme in the book. Many of the best passages of the book deal with the question of identity, and Feazell makes some of his best points regarding it. He writes that for the Worldwide Church of God, the question of identity was of utmost importance, whether it was the Biblical identity of United States and Britain or the identity of WCG members as the called out ones taking part in a great, global media enterprise. Feazell argues, though, that the only identity that truly matters is the identity of Christ, and that various groups’ identities are of secondary importance.

All the same, corporate identity of the WCG is very important for Feazell and the other administrators. The identity they’re all trying to cultivate is one of a moderately conservative evangelical denomination. As such, it’s not surprising how many times he tosses around phrases that sound like they come from a Max Lucado book. Examples include:

  • “Praise God for his grace!” (130).
  • “The gospel broke into our hearts like a clear, fresh, bubbling mountain brook after an exhausting, seemingly endless climb over burning rocks and parched soil on a blistering day” (139).
  • Worship should be “a genuine rehearsal of the gospel story” (80).

One might legitimately ask, “What does a ‘genuine rehearsal of the gospel story’ look like?” Feazell doesn’t proffer and answer, perhaps assuming that at least a significant portion of his target, evangelical audience will know what this vague, feel-good phrase could possibly mean.

It is not the only example of fuzzy, self-affirming evangelical haziness. A few pages later, Feazell includes this description of the gospel, which deserves to be quoted at length:

According to Frederick Buechner, the key to effective preaching is honesty. And as Buechner asserts, the incarnation is the epitome of honesty. That is because Jesus Christ — God with us, God in the flesh — ever faithful, meets us precisely where we are — in a particular place in a particular time in the particular reality of our broken and wretched humanity. He offers himself as the perfect means to our healing and restoration, and he perfectly establishes in himself our eternal significance and future.

We are made in such a way that this astounding truth reaches our hearts through the stimulation of our imagination — not through the logical “proofs” and stacks of facts we like to amass before we are prepared to believe anything that threatens to significantly change the way we live. and Buechner is surely right about the sheer wildness of this story. It is an extravagant tale — at once shocking, disturbing, comforting, and thrilling. It is a paradox of unbounded power and senseless self-sacrifice, a song of indescribably love in the face of brutal disaster. It is the turning and twisting story of the crucible of our confusing lives into which God himself has entered to bring meaning to the absurd.

Always surprising, always unexpected, always turning the endlessly resurfacing tragedy to hope, always piercing turmoil with peace, always wringing joy out of pain, this gospel is the reality from which all forms of the human story flow. In the gospel everything changes, yet everything continues as it was before. In the gospel of Jesus Christ the impossible is possible though it cannot be done, and the darkness is lit with invisible light. As Fredrick Buechner so richly puts it, this gospel is “the tale that is too good not to be true” (85, 86).

Once again, it is legitimate to ask what exactly all that means. In some ways, it seems empty — simply poetic description of the gospel, meant to resonant with evangelical Christians. Not only that, but one can question what the point is of the last two paragraphs is, except to show his Protestant audience that the WCG has indeed changed. Referring to the “sheer wildness” of the gospel and describing it with phrases like “a song of indescribably love in the face of brutal disaster,” “the endlessly resurfacing tragedy to hope,” and “the reality from which all forms of the human story flow” firmly places Feazell in the evangelical community, at least in appearance.

Condemning Armstrong

Feazell and the Worldwide Church of God leadership are in an interesting position. They have to condemn the heresies of Herbert Armstrong. However, the primary heresy, according to Feazell, is that Armstrong relegated all of Christendom to satanic deception and heresy. In a sense, then, it is the ultimate finger-pointing game.

Feazell must walk a fine line: on the one hand he has to condemn Armstrong’s theology; on the other, he has to show that that theology has changed and is no longer exclusivist (which was, in Feazell’s assessment, the primary sin of the WCG), condemning all of Christianity to being the “Whore of Babylon.” As such, Feazell in his book begins by condemning Armstrong’s theology, switches to a brief rebuke of those who condemn Armstrong’s person, and ends again condemning Armstrong’s theology. In other words, he swings back and forth between condemning Armstrong and condemning those who condemn Armstrong.

Recalling that Armstrong’s main problem was his exclusivist views, Feazell writes, “I pray we never descend again to thinking ourselves the legitimate arbiters of truth versus error” (100). Yet just two pages earlier, he writes, “I will go so far as to say that Sabbatarianism prevents anyone who believes in it from coming fully to the freedom of the gospel” (98). Isn’t that, to some degree, arbitrating truth and error? The “true” gospel is not a Sabbatarian gospel, he seems to be saying. Earlier still he conjectured that as long as people “continue to believe that Armstrong was what he claimed to be, they cannot fully enjoy the richness, rest, and joy of salvation that is theirs through confidence in Jesus” (97). One cannot have the true gospel in one’s heart and be an “Armstrongite.” Indeed, Armstrongism (or Armstrong himself — it’s not clear exactly which Feazell is referring to, and I suspect that is not an accidental ambiguity) was a “Barrier to Christ” (96). Further, when several ministers proposed a middle-ground compromise that would allow some churches to follow Armstrong’s Old Covenant teachings and others to follow Tkach’s New Covenant changes, it was “rejected as an affront to the gospel” (132). In other words, it was wrong.

The tensions within the WCG administration thus come to full view. In order to embrace traditional Christianity, the administration must continue to commit Armstrong’s “biggest sin” and arbitrate between right and wrong. The primary difference now, though, is that the WCG’s sense of orthodoxy is the polar opposite of what it was under Armstrong.

“If you can’t say anything good . . .”

Despite the problems, Liberation does offer some new views and surprisingly astute analysis. The stress on identity, while problematic as discussed earlier, does show how critical the question of identity was in the Worldwide Church of God.4 It is a fairly well established sociological fact that groups with a worldview that deviates from that of society as a whole will expend a great deal of effort constructing, defending (i.e., apologetics), and protecting that worldview and the accompanying identity. Feazell’s recognition of the importance of identity in a cognitively deviant group is good to see.

Perhaps the best point Feazell makes is regarding the formation of the church and members’ role in it.

Begun not as a church but a media ministry, the church just “happened” in the wake of Armstrong’s mass media proclamation. Until the day he died, Armstrong saw the role of the church as simply to stand behind him in prayer and financial support in his mission of preaching the gospel to the world.

This also touches on the issue of identity, for now members must identify themselves as “members of a local church [and not] a group of special people called to support a powerful, globe-girdling media ministry” (109). Further, it follows such a vision will impact worship in the WCG.

Once again, worship is relegated to the role of a tool to uphold Herbert Armstrong as God’s appointed end-time apostle and Armstrong’s church as the one and only true church, the body to which one must belong in order to be saved (85).

It also seems to have influenced how the WCG proselytized: “Rather than evangelize unbelievers, the Worldwide Church of God targeted the Christian community” (153). Most importantly, it follows that since members were called to support Armstrong they were not called for individual salvation.

There was a surprising amount of forthrightness, though not as much as many WCG critics would have liked. The admission of lack of WCG vision, for example, is surprisingly forthright (145), and as mentioned before, the analysis of this fact is quite enlightening. Further, the admission of potential bankruptcy is surprising (130).

Yet despite these surprises, the book has little going for it. As I pointed out, it is certainly revealing, showing a certain level of contradiction in the messages and behavior of denominational headquarters. However, I doubt such “revelation” is what Feazell was planning.

Notes

1 Some exiters and critics of the Worldwide Church of God claim this is further proof that the WCG is still essentially a cult, but that doesn’t necessarily follow.

2 It’s interesting that he writes that the administration could and “should have gone much more slowly with changes in worship style” (120). I don’t recall such changes causing the monumental problems in people’s lives that the changes regarding the Sabbath and God’s nature did. I never heard a comment like, “Oh my! We don’t have to do three hymns, followed by the opening prayer and sermonette, with another hymn before announcements. We have freedom in how Sabbath services are organized! This is chaos! And we all know who the author of confusion is!”

3 A prime example of the poor organization is the scattered discussion of the Sabbath. Feazell discusses it at length page 98, delving into the well-worn, evangelical cliché that Jesus is the Christian’s real Sabbath. Yet he discussed it from Armstrong point of view on page 77 to 84. In between is a bit about Armstrong’s false prophecies, and a section dealing with the simple fact that Armstrong was “not what he claimed to be” (97). It would have made more sense to consolidate all the discussion of the Sabbath into one chapter.

4 According to my reading notes, the idea of identity is mentioned at least ten times, on the following pages: 69, 71, 83, 94, 107, 124, 125, 137, 142, and 144.

More Pack Nonsense

Tuesday 4 October 2022

You’d think a man would eventually learn. After setting the date for Jesus’s return at least five times that I know of, David Pack has set yet another date just days after his latest failure. Jesus was supposed to come back a little over a week ago, on 26 September. This last Saturday, Pack explained he’d learned a lot of new things in the previous week. God had blinded him before; now he can see.

If you listen to him talk about the prophetic world he’s created for himself and his followers, it’s easy to see how far from reality the man has strayed.

The 1,335 days, the ten-day period, the fifteen-day kingdom — all his followers know exactly what he’s talking about (well, perhaps not exactly as those who have recently left point out that Pack has been changing these doctrines on a whim over the last few years) but no one else knows. It might as well be gibberish. It might as well sound like this:

But like all good cult leaders, he’s not afraid ultimately to tell his followers where their place is:

“Shut up and learn.” That’s their job.

More Predictions

Wednesday 21 September 2022

Dave Pack is at it again. He’s predicting Jesus’s return within the next nineteen hours:

19 Hours

In case that’s not clear, that’s tomorrow:

2 Choices (Tomorrow)

We can forgive him for not having figured it out sooner — after all, no one else has figured this out:

Figured it out

He’s figured out lots of other things, so we should be grateful for that.

Tickle

He’d predicted this earlier, and it didn’t come to pass, but in the end, he was just a day off. A day and nine years:

9 Years off

Still, it’s a relief to know the return of Jesus is happening tomorrow.

At least, that’s what he said on 17 September…

Off the Rails

Wednesday 8 June 2022

I’ve been listening to some of Herbert Armstrong’s sermons the last couple of days, and it’s been a fascinatingly awful experience. I knew what was coming: I grew up listening to this shit, but I still had forgotten about just how awful he was. Just how misogynistic he was. Just how much he liked to yell during sermons to impress upon congregants just how serious his words (and thus God’s words) were.

I made a mental note about a couple of the passages because they just stood out so drastically. In this one, for example, he goes from talking about the fall of Lucifer and his resulting transformation into Satan to the evils of women wearing makeup — without any kind of transition at all. None.

By the end of the sermon, he turns his attention to men and the inappropriate clothing some of them are wearing to church — shirts with no jacket!

What’s most interesting is he suggests that not everyone has to be dressed up just wearing the best clothes they’ve got without even thinking that perhaps the men who aren’t wearing suits are doing just that — wearing the best they’ve got. And then, of course, there’s the misogynistic double standard: women aren’t to worry about their appearance but men had better be dressed smart!

Beginning to cross yet another item off the list

As I’ve listened to these three or four sermons (how many more will I put myself through?!), I’ve come to re-learn the man’s cadences: I can predict with dreadful accuracy when he’s about to ramp up, go off the rails, and start yelling.

First Day of Break

Tuesday 7 June 2022

Today was my first full day off. What did I get scratched off that list? Something I’d forgotten even to add to the list in the first place. It’s something I started last summer. Or was it the summer before that? I could check, but what’s the point — the point is that it wasn’t completely finished, that French drain project. I’d intended to hook the whole system up to three of the five downspouts on the back of the house.

Since we’ve hired someone to enclose the area under our deck with lattice, and he was scheduled to start today, I knew I had to finish hooking everything up this morning.

Morning curiosity

While I worked, I conducted informal research on a project I’ve had lingering in the back of my mind for years now, something I’ve wanted to write but just never had the distance required to write about it. Now that both my parents have passed, I’ve started drafting ideas for an extended piece on my religious upbringing. A memoir? Who knows what it will be. But I’ve started exploring that world again, downloading old sermons from the 70s and 80s from an internet archive of impressive scope, a site that has made available all the literature (books, “booklets,” magazines, sermons, television broadcasts) of the Worldwide Church of God, the organization in which I grew up.

Tent where special church services were held in 1973

I grew up having expectations for my teen years and early adulthood that were so different that my peers’ expectations that they’re almost laughable now.

I’ve written about similar matters here, but mainly I’ve explored the groups that exist that profess, to varying degrees, the same theology of the WCG. Now, I’ll write about my own experiences growing up in such an environment.

The Last Great Day

Tuesday 28 September 2021

They woke up this morning with a sense of excitement and dread, thrilled with their sense of foreboding and relief. Today, Jesus was returning. No one knew the hour, that is certain, but it would certainly happen today.

Unless it didn’t. It wasn’t the first time their leader had predicted Jesus’s return. It wasn’t even the second time he’d foretold the day. It wasn’t the third or fourth time. Many members of the group had lost track of how many times their leader had made this exact prediction with the same fervent confidence.  Just a year before, their leader had suggested that during this same fall festival Jesus would return.

“You won’t be returning to your houses!” He’d confidently assured everyone. He’d suggested that members might be talking to the resurrected Abraham — the Abraham of the Bible — within days. Even the original leader of their group, Herbert Armstrong, would have risen from the dead within that week and members would be able to “ask him yourselves” about various prophetic timing he seemed to get a little wrong.

So when they wake this morning and recalled their leader’s words from earlier in the week-long festival they were celebrating when he’d assured them Jesus would come back by Tuesday, they were hopeful that he might finally be right and worried that once again the prescribed day would come and go just like every other day before it.

Why do these people, members of the Restored Church of God under the autocratic leadership of Dave Pack, stick around and continue to support Pack’s delusions? The man sees himself as the most hated man on Earth. He has said about his importance in coming events that, from the perspective of the powers of evil seeking to wreck God’s plan, “I must be stopped at all costs!” Why do they continue to support him when year after year he has made the same false prophecy about the return of Jesus? It’s simple: the sunken cost fallacy. They’ve invested so much time and money into the prospect already that they cannot bring themselves to cut free. After all, there’s still the hope that he is God’s only apostle and his exclusive spokesman on Earth. If they leave now and then Jesus returns, they’ve forfeited their crown, literally: they believe they will become gods, part of the so-called “God family” that Pack and other heretics teach is the explanation of the passage in Genesis, “Let US make man in OUR image.” Abandoning the plan now means giving up god-hood if Pack ever does get it right. And since they thought for so long that eventually, he would get it right, they can’t bring themselves to admit that while he might be wrong now, he might eventually be right.

And yet they’ve heard it all before. They likely view their doubts as temptations of the devil, an attempt to get them to give up their crown — the ultimate victory for the devil.

In the midst of all this, I look at this little group that splintered away from the group I grew up in — I used to believe many of the absurd things the Restored Church of God teaches — and think about those members who are watching these last hours of the promised day slip away, and I feel for them.

Monday Night Moon

Monday 13 September 2021

After desert, when K pretended she was about to eat E’s while he ran inside for a moment, we went to the front yard to get a little family exercise. L, having stayed home today because of sinus issues, passed the volleyball to me. Later, the Boy and I worked on his defensive skills in soccer.

As the Girl and I played, I noticed that, over her shoulder, the waxing moon was almost a half-moon. A waxing moon in the autumn was always a harbinger of the greatest week of the year, hands down, year after year. It was in the fall that our heterodox sect took a week off of work and school to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles in a strange attempt to follow the pattern of Old Testament holy days that we were taught were still required.

When I was L’s age, the sight of such a moon in September would edge me toward near-giddiness as I thought about all the adventures that awaited after the obligatory, daily, and often boring church service (yes, daily church — a two-hour service, no less, with a sermon that lasted anywhere from sixty to ninety ass- and mind-numbing minutes). Surely I’d meet new friends. Maybe we’d see some great attractions. But most enticing was the promise of what everyone called a feast-fling: a week-long adolescent romance that ended with addresses and phone numbers exchanged along with promises and more promises, a romance that was lucky to reach Christmas break. “Maybe we’ll go to the same feast site next year!” was the excitement.

It never worked, of course, because adolescent romances are just that — flings. But that excitement along with the excitement of all the other amazing experiences we’d certainly have hung in the glow around waxing autumnal moons.

My children know none of these things. The specifics of my religious upbringing are a complete mystery to them. I’m content to let them assume what they will. I’ve hesitated to tell them anything about it because it doesn’t seem all that relevant to their lives, and quite honestly, I didn’t want to shade how they saw Nana and Papa. That of course assumes that it would color how they see them, which is likely a projection: through almost all of my adult life, I have looked at the beliefs they inculcated into me, beliefs they held with complete conviction but were without a shred of logic even within a strictly Christian theological context, and wondered how in the world they could have fallen for such silliness. I know they came to view their own beliefs similarly, returning eventually to a more orthodox Protestant faith, but somehow I still hesitated.

“I hesitated,” I say as if it’s something that’s occupied a large part of my conscious thoughts. In truth, it has, but only in a theoretical, theological sense. My thoughts have only turned to that theology while mowing or having a cigar and scotch on a Saturday night. Unless I happen to see a waxing autumnal moon…

Predictions

Sunday 7 February 2021

Back on October 3, my favorite cult leader, David Pack, predicted a definitive date for the return of Jesus. It would happen before October 13. It’s now February.

Oops.

Earlier this month, though, he set a new date. During last week’s sermon, he made a few assertions:

  • It’s a perfect picture…only the whole thing crashes if Christ doesn’t come this Friday.
  • God streamed this concluding list through my mind without notes or the Bible.
  • It’s a divine act, if all these prophecies are at stake, would God let me mess up? He had to just stream it into me!
  • Sabat 24, is this Friday night. May we now see Christ, the kingdom, all the New Testament saints, and all Israel [resurrected] in just over 4 days. If it’s wrong then you now understand why I kinda thought I was on to something. (Banned by HWA)

Well, it’s now Sunday. What do we make of that? Was Pack wrong? Of course not. He sent out a memo late Friday night:

We have received numerous emails from the field expressing your amazement and excitement about what is upon us. Brethren here at Headquarters are right there with you!

As we enter the Sabbath, understand there is a case for Christ coming this side of midnight (Headquarters time). But the case grows stronger after midnight. And the most powerful case of all, with literally dozens of reasons just reviewed by 15 ministers at Headquarters, indicates Christ comes late in the day on the Sabbath tomorrow. So strong is this case, it appears virtually impossible that anything happens tonight. But do not stop watching! It is important to Mr. Pack that all of you remain on the same page we are, hence this brief update.

Rest assured, Christ coming later on the Sabbath in no way violates the intricate mathematical relationships between the key dates we have studied in God’s Plan.

We look forward to seeing you very soon!

Banned by HWA

Notice his phrasing: “As we enter the Sabbath, understand there is a case for Christ coming this side of midnight (Headquarters time). But the case grows stronger after midnight.” Using “the case grows” indicates that Pack is watching and praying, watching and reading the Bible, watching and meditating, and even now, at this last moment, things are becoming clearer: his timing might have been off by just a few hours. How do clear-headed, skeptical observers interpret this? “The day I predicted Jesus’s return is drawing to a close and, holy shit! He’s not here yet!”

He says, “Rest assured, Christ coming later on the Sabbath in no way violates the intricate mathematical relationships between the key dates we have studied in God’s Plan.” What he wants his followers to hear is simple: “This is complicated stuff, brethren. It’s taken my years to understand this! It’s math!” What we skeptis hear: “Please don’t leave my church and take your money with you when this turns out wrong! Please! I’m not qualified to do anything else. How will I make my money? How will I afford my enormous house?”

Of course, it’s written as if Pack himself isn’t saying this: “It is important to Mr. Pack…” But is there any doubt really?

Then, yesterday afternoon, they posted this:

While it is a discussion beyond the scope of a short update, bear in mind the Sabbath has not ended in the far west. The math and science do not break! In fact, many principles and verses show we must reach the far end of the Sabbath as it exists worldwide—all the way through the time zones of the western islands of the Pacific.

More than a dozen Headquarters ministers who just met discussed this again thoroughly and none can see a way out of tonight. Believe us when we say that we have tried! If there is more to see, God will certainly reveal it. Any details would be passed along in the coming days.

Again, keep watching. Our wait cannot be long!

And now it’s Sunday. And what?

Why do people continue with him? It’s simple — the sunken cost fallacy. Once you’ve invested so much in an idea, it’s all but impossible to give that idea up.